Quotes by Henry David Thoreau

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Generally speaking, a howling wilderness does not howl: it is the imagination of the traveler that does the howling.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

Its not what you look at that matters, its what you see.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a mans life as in a book. Haste makes waste, no less in life than in housekeeping. Keep the time, observe the hours of the universe, not of the cars.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.